Two years after first being granted planning permission, AFC Wimbledon have today finally been given the go ahead to start building a new stadium, just 250 yards down the road from their spiritual home at Plough Lane.

Wimbledon FC originally moved to Plough Lane in 1912 and subsequently spent the next eight decades there before finally upping sticks and moving in with Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park in 1991 when, after surging up through the leagues, it was decided their old ground couldn’t feasibly be modernised to suit new safety standards.

The club then splintered in twain in 2002, with AFC making a new home for themselves at Kingsmeadow, five miles across town on the other side of Wimbledon.

The old Plough Lane ground, humble home of Wimbledon FC (Photo: Press Association)

However, AFC’s long wait to move back to Wimbledon proper now appears to be almost over, with the club receiving permission from Merton Council to start work on a new £25million, 11,000-seater ground next summer.

The ground, which will be called ‘New Plough Lane’, is to be built on the site of the old Wimbledon greyhound stadium, with the Dons hopeful of moving in for the start of the 2019/20 season.

AFC Wimbledon chief executive Erik Samuelson was positively brimming over when he spoke to the Evening Standard:

Everyone in football knows the story of how AFC Wimbledon came into being. A group of fans started with nothing; no ground, no team, no manager, no players and no kit.

Now, fifteen years later, we have taken a giant step towards going home.

This is a momentous day for us. Everybody who has helped the club to reach this point must be very proud.

You’re looking at the culmination of years of hard work, with a hard core of Dons fans working tirelessly to bring the club back home.

Congrats to everyone involved at @AFCWimbledon on finally getting the go-ahead to return to Plough Lane today. Means so much to a brilliant bunch of fans. Particularly congrats to @ivor27 and @jerik48, who have done SO MUCH over so many years. Exciting times ahead. #afcw

Just for the record, Wimbledon are planning to part-finance their new stadium with the money raised from selling their current Kingsmeadow ground to Chelsea, who plan to use it as a new base for their academy and women’s teams. The rest will be made up of loans and investments.

The Dons are also harbouring ambitious plans when it comes to officially opening their New Plough Lane, with Samuelson revealing that they are keen to rope in another fan-owned club for the occasion.

We will start thinking soon about who we would like to play in our opening game and the first thing you will think of are the biggest teams in the world.

Why not ask Barcelona?! The sky is the limit! Nothing has got in our way before. We will give everything a go!

It’s that time of year again, when Pies offer you all a timely assist with the oft-perilous task of purchasing Christmas presents for that football-obsessed maniac in your life.

When you spend €200million on a player, you’re not just investing in his footballing talent but his worldwide commercial value too.

Hence, having fluffed the GDP of an aspiring Pacific island nation to acquire Neymar from Barcelona last summer, it’s only natural that PSG should attempt to start recouping their vast outlay, €23 a time, in pizza-cutter form…

Go on, treat yourself, and help a poor football club build a pretty dream this Christmas.

Chelsea cruised to a 3-1 victory away to Huddersfield on Tuesday night, with Willian nabbing a goal and two assists in an impressive individual display.

However, in the stands, the travelling support were rather less successful with their chants, scoring an almighty own-goal when trying to goad the Huddersfield faithful.

Singing “Champions of England, you’ll never sing that”, the Chelsea fans made a right mess of their footballing history, forgetting (or simply not knowing at all) that the Terriers had won three first division titles in the mid-1920s, some 29 years before the Blues won their first in 1955.

Telegraph journalist, Sam Wallace, was one of the first to report the historic faux pas.

‘Champions of England, you’ll never sing that’, sing the Chelsea fans to Huddersfield who won their first league title 31 years before Chelsea

Crystal Palace battled their way out of the relegation zone, at least for a day, after a dramatic 2-1 victory at home to Watford.

The Hornets looked to be headed for a 1-0 victory after Richarlison set up Daryl Janmaat after just three minutes.

The hosts struggled to make their mark on the game, with Watford looking very comfortable.

However, a crazy final five minutes would change all that, with the sending-off of Tom Cleverley on ’87 for a second yellow the catalyst.

Just two minutes after the sending-off, Bakary Sako scored from close-range to level the scores.

The French-born forward was on hand to tap home after Wilfried Zaha’s low shot came squirming back off Heurelho Gomes…

Things then got even better for the home fans in the second minute of stoppage time, when sub James McArthur fired home from a Zaha cross.

The incredible win sees Palace move out of the bottom three for the first time since the very first day of the season, as they extended their unbeaten run to six games. Although, with their fellow strugglers all playing tomorrow, it may well be just a temporary escape from the drop-zone.

The result also afforded Zaha the opportunity to have a little dig back at the travelling Hornets fans, who had spent the previous 90 minutes bombarding him with nothing but jip…

Lazio fans let their feelings about referee Piero Giacomelli be known after bombarding the Serie A match official’s café with negative ratings on TripAdvisor.

Revenge proved to be a dish best served cold for Biancocelesti supporters, who took to the review site a day after Giacomelli controversially sent Ciro Immobile off during Lazio’s 3-1 loss to Torino, but missed an apparent handball from Iago Falque.

The decision drew criticism from Lazio officials with Sporting Director Igli Tare branding Giacomelli’s performance “a huge scandal, in fact more than a scandal”, while club spokesman Arturo Diaconale suggested referees were actively looking to undermine Lazio’s efforts this term.

Still smarting after a loss that dents the Rome club’s Champions League qualification hopes, Lazio fans headed online to vent their angst.

Having got word that Giacomelli ran a café in Trieste called Café Rossetti, fans began flooding the establishment’s TripAdvisor page with negative reviews.

According to Football Italia, some of the new one-star reviews branded the restaurant “a nightmare” warning diners to “stay far away from this café” while others made sly digs at Giacomelli’s performance, with one review titled “how to ruin an evening with incompetence.”

Some reviews were creatively snide, but others were a little less subtle.

“The chef decided to send out a meal which indecorous and difficult to choke down,” another supposed patron moaned.

“Despite the numerous complaints from me and my friends, who were dissatisfied with that incomprehensible dish, the chef decided to send us away in the middle of the evening while still making us pay a large bill.

“It would have been a nice evening but everything was spoiled by a person unfit to do this job.”

Unfortunately for those Lazio fans leaving these lengthy negative reviews it soon transpired that Giacomelli no longer works at or owns a stake in the restaurant.

Divock Origi produced one of the misses of the season on Tuesday night, with the Liverpool loanee somehow managing to miss an open goal from all three yards out during Wolfsburg’s Bundesliga clash with RB Leipzig.

Origi moved on loan from Liverpool in the summer after struggling to make his mark at Anfield, instead opting to get some regular game time with Wolfsburg.

The 22-year-old Belgian hasn’t done too badly in the German top-flight, netting four goals in 14 games. However, on Tuesday, he produced the mother of all misses late on with the score poised at 1-1…

Plugging away in the fourth tier of Swedish football just six seasons ago, Ostersunds are currently gearing up for a two-legger against Arsenal in the knockout phase of the Europa League.

Graham Potter and his intrepid squad are finally being given a little serious continental kudos for their sterling efforts over the last few years, but a little over a year ago they were still – whisper it – being ever so slightly patronised.

Indeed, the Ostersunds players were corralled into performing a song and dance number to open the Football Gala 2016 – the annual end-of-season award show at which the ‘Guldbollen’ is doled out.

The live number opened the show and saw the first-team jigging about semi-flamboyantly to ‘There’s No Business Like Showbusiness’ (complete with a cameo from Sweden women’s coach Pia Sundhage) as Zlatan Ibrahimovic gawped on vacantly from the audience…

How far they’ve come in such a short space of time.

The Gunners really won’t want to lose this one now. Can you imagine the post-defeat harakiri on Arsenal FAn TV?

There were rare old scenes in Monterrey yesterday as roughly half-a-million Tigres fans swarmed the city streets in celebration of their team’s Liga MX title victory.

According to the Nuevo Leon government, the 500,000-ish fans stretched out for 10 kilometres between Tigres’ stadium and Macroplaza in downtown Monterrey, all decked out in yellow and blue, waving flags and generally being merry.

Tigres coach Ricardo ‘Tuca’ Ferreti also celebrated by allowed his players to shave off his trademark moustache after they secured the title with an aggregate win over rivals CD Monterrey on Sunday night…

It’s that time of year again, when Pies offer you all a timely assist with the oft-perilous task of purchasing Christmas presents for that football-obsessed maniac in your life.

For the Calcioholic who has everything, why not delve into the Fiorentina club store and pick up a vinyl sticker that instantly transforms your dishwasher into a artistic silhouetted rendering of the Florence skyline?

Oddly, you can either spend €59 on one large sticker (82 x 60cm) or €51 on two smaller stickers (45 x 82cm) stickers, assuming you’re on of those people who refuse to buy regular size dishwashers and instead opt for a couple of slightly smaller ones running side by side.

Two days on and details of the wee bout of fisticuffs that followed Sunday’s Manchester derby at Old Trafford are still filtering through as the finger of blame continues to be wafted around willy-nilly.

The skirmish was allegedly sparked when Jose Mourinho went wading into the Man City dressing to reprimand goalkeeper Ederson about having the gall to celebrate his side’s victory.

Things then really kicked off when Mourinho was pelted with a plastic bottle and doused in water and milk, at which point the United players came steaming in to defend their manager – a fracas in which punches were reportedly thrown and City coach Mikel Arteta was left bruised and bloodied.

Rather amazingly, the Daily Mail have produced a rather nifty infographic that features an in-depth (but entirely second-hand) account of the brawl within “the inner sanctum” of United’s stadium.

As well as the wonderful ‘safety instructions on a cross-channel ferry’ graphic style, some of the play-by-play descriptions underneath are immortal: “Led by marauding, bare-chested Marcos Rojo” being a particular favourite of ours.

Click on the image to view it full size (1057 x 445)…

It really does have it all: Mourinho darting out of the door, Michael Carrick whelping helplessly from the back, the hilarious limp trajectory of the strewn bottle, an explosive corridor scrum led by a marauding, bare-chested Rojo, lines, arrows, dots, one lone policeman standing around like a spare part.

We feel like we’re there. We can almost smell the Deep Heat.

It’s a work of latter-day Renaissance art and, as such, Pies are giving serious consideration to having this blown up and committed to canvas.